


paper tiara

by abluestocking



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Family, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abluestocking/pseuds/abluestocking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan Bones, Aunt Amelia, and Christmas.</p><p>Written for <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05">redsnake05</a>, for <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Fandom_Stocking/">fandom-stocking</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paper tiara

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/gifts).



~//~

Susan has always loved Christmas.

One of her earliest memories is of a warm, bustling house filled with laughter and light. Her father in the kitchen making his famous rhubarb crumble, her mother hanging the Christmas lights from the rafters, the Wyrd Sisters singing on the radio – Susan can almost hear the traditional debate her parents always had, about whether using a wand to bake was cheating or not (her Muggle mother said it wasn’t, her wizard father said it was).

She couldn’t have been more than five or six, she thinks, curled up in the big armchair by the fire. She’d been solemnly licking a candy cane when the door had blown open, and her aunt Amelia had swept in with the snow, her cheeks rosy and her hair askew. 

Aunt Amelia hadn’t seemed to care that Susan was slightly sticky from the candy cane. She’d gathered her up in her arms and squished her close, and then presented her with a stuffed rabbit that Susan could have sworn scrunched its nose at her. “I know it’s early,” she’d said guiltily, grinning at Susan’s father, “but one present a few days early won’t hurt.”

The rabbit had been duly named Candy Cane, because Susan had been a logical child, and it had come to dinner with her, sitting in the chair next to her at table. There had been plenty of open seats at the long table, seats enough for ten rabbits; they always clustered together at one end, but for some reason at Christmas her mother had always set places at each of the other chairs. 

She vaguely remembers her father teasing Aunt Amelia about working too hard, her mother pinching him under the table, Aunt Amelia telling a story about chasing down some smugglers. She remembers singing carols, later on, and giving Aunt Amelia her birthday presents, and scarfing down three helpings of pudding. She remembers laughter, and hugs, and being swung high in the air by Aunt Amelia (who was really very strong).

Mostly, though, she remembers trying to feed Candy Cane bits of carrot under the table and being half-convinced that she felt him lip at her fingers.

~//~

Not all of the empty places at the Christmas table had stayed empty forever. Candy Cane had kept his place through the years, getting grubbier and grubbier but no less loved. And the year Susan went to Hogwarts, Aunt Amelia brought Zahra to Christmas, and their foursome had become five.

Zahra had reminded Susan a little bit of Professor Sprout, although she was younger, and a chef from Edinburgh instead of Susan’s Head of House. She’d been friendly and plump, cracked jokes that Susan suspected were just this side shy of a little bit rude, and made Aunt Amelia get this little dazed smile on her face whenever she looked at her. She’d taken Susan’s dad’s side in the should-baking-be-done-with-wands debate, thus winning his affections, but she’d also helped Susan’s mum wrap presents, thus winning hers. (Susan still doesn’t know how Zahra managed to do all those complicated ribbony things – she’d have thought it was magic, but Zahra hadn’t a magical bone in her body. Muggle magic, perhaps?)

Susan hadn’t been sure what to think of her at first; Aunt Amelia had always been Susan’s special person, and Susan had quite liked all the presents and hugs and stories she’d brought. It had seemed hard to give her up to a newcomer, however infectious Zahra’s smile was, and however happy Aunt Amelia looked. She’d tried her best, because she loved Aunt Amelia, but it had been hard.

She’d gone out on the doorstep at last, watching her breath in the cold air and scuffing the snow underfoot. Inside had seemed a bit too warm suddenly; it was a big house, and all the old pictures were overflowing with people, but Susan had been used to only four in it for Christmases. 

She couldn’t have been sitting outside for more than five minutes before Aunt Amelia came out and sat down next to her, shivering theatrically. “Brrr,” she’d said, putting an arm around Susan’s shoulders and drawing her close. “What’s wrong, munchkin?”

Susan hadn’t known what to say. She’d snuggled closer to Aunt Amelia, turning her face into Aunt Amelia’s ridiculous Christmas jumper (a Muggle tradition, unlike wandless baking, which her mother _had_ kept), and held on in the December cold.

Aunt Amelia had sighed. “Is it Zahra?” She’d been quiet a long moment. “She’s really a lovely person, Susie. I know you’ll like her once you get to know her.”

“I like her a lot,” Susan had protested, her words muffled. “It’s just…” Her fingers had tightened in Aunt Amelia’s jumper. “Will you have to go away on Christmases from now on?”

Both of Aunt Amelia’s arms had come around her then, holding her close in one of Aunt Amelia’s patented squishy hugs. “No. I promise. Zahra knows that Christmases in the Bones family are special Christmases.” She’d laughed, and Susan, listening to that laugh bounce around in her chest, had known that everything was going to be all right. “I’ll still be at Christmases when I’m an old, old lady, and I’ll make you run around and fetch me things and tell you all my stories for the ninetieth time.”

“I’ll still love your stories even on the ninetieth time,” Susan had said, loyally.

When they’d gone back inside, it hadn’t seemed too warm any longer, but just warm enough. Zahra had made a cake for Aunt Amelia’s birthday, and it was chocolate, Susan’s favourite. “All the magic I can do,” she’d said merrily, setting the cake in front of Aunt Amelia and winking at Susan. “But it’s pretty magical, if I do say so myself.”

“I can provide the rest,” Aunt Amelia had said, smiling up at her, and lit the candles with a magisterial wave of her wand.

Zahra always said after that Christmas that she won Susan’s heart with her chocolate cake, but Susan knows she won it with Aunt Amelia’s smile.

~//~

“Come in from the cold, dear,” Susan’s mother says, softly. 

Susan sits, numbly, on the step, staring into the middle distance, remembering all those past Christmases. Aunt Amelia, sitting here on the step next to her, holding her close; Zahra’s cake; the laughter and the stories and the teasing, the hugs and the presents, Aunt Amelia’s smile.

Susan’s mother sits down next to her, and suddenly Susan can’t bear it any longer. She buries her face in her mother’s shoulder and cries.

They were only ever four. Four around the Christmas table, with all those empty places, with all those happy pictures of Christmases past on the mantelpiece. Four Bones, against the world, where once there had been a merry clutch. Susan’s seen the pictures, of her grandmother holding a newborn Susan, of her grandfather bouncing her on his knee, of her rolling on the floor with her cousin Marjorie. Four, and then five for a time, with Zahra. Maybe more to come; she’d overheard the grownups talking last year, about how maybe, when the war was over, maybe Susan would have a little cousin again.

And now they’re only three.

“It’s not _fair_ ,” Susan says, desperately, her voice a rasp.

“No,” her mother says, holding her close, “it’s not.”

Susan doesn’t blame Zahra for not coming for Christmas. It’s only been a few months since it happened. _Susan_ almost didn’t want to come home for Christmas, to see the missing place at the table, to hear the missing part in the carols, to long for the missing birthday candles.

“Zahra sent you this,” her mother says, when Susan’s only sniffling a little.

It’s a photo, of a Christmas Susan doesn’t remember. She’s a cute frizzy-haired toddler with rosy cheeks and chubby legs, squirming in Aunt Amelia’s lap while Aunt Amelia laughs, her head thrown back. She’s barely more than a girl herself, Susan realises, with a bit of a shock. She always remembers Aunt Amelia as a grown-up woman, ruling the world and taking names, despite all her squishy hugs and silly Christmas jumpers. But this Aunt Amelia is young, and curly-haired, and Susan’s heart aches desperately.

The little Susan in the picture is scowling intently, and as the older Susan watches, she picks up a paper crown from the table and scrambles to her wobbly feet, setting the crown in Aunt Amelia’s hair. Aunt Amelia kisses her cheek as baby Susan claps her hands in delight, and grownup Susan finds herself blinking back tears again.

“She loved you very much,” her mother says, quietly. “You were our hope, after what happened. You were the one who taught us to laugh again.”

Susan stares at the photo. “What happens,” she asks, “if I’ve forgotten how?”

Her mother is silent, looking at the photo in Susan’s hands, still stroking Susan’s hair. “She kept that photo on her desk until the day she died,” she says at last. “I think she would say that we all have to learn how again. Somehow.”

Susan looks at the young Aunt Amelia, barely more than a girl. She’d lost nearly her entire family, an overflowing household down to a tiny handful, and yet she’d learned to laugh again. She’d brought Susan a rabbit named Candy Cane, and taught her how to ski, and helped her make snow-turtles and snow-lobsters and snow-hippogriffs. She’d sung soprano in the Christmas carols, and swung Susan around in the air until she was nearly ten, and taught Susan a killer imitation of Professor McGonagall that had made her the toast of the Hufflepuff common room for nearly two weeks. She’d loved more than anyone Susan knew, loved Susan and Susan’s dad and Susan’s mum, loved Zahra, loved their cat Fuzzball.

It takes bravery, Susan realises now, to love that much after so much loss. Her parents are brave. Aunt Amelia was brave.

And Susan is brave. She’s a Bones, after all.

She squares her shoulders. “Do you think,” she asks her mother, blinking in the cold December air, “that we could make a birthday cake?”

~//~

Amelia will be born three days before Christmas, ten years and some months after Voldemort’s second fall.

Susan will tuck a worn little rabbit into the cradle at her daughter’s feet, and then sink into a chair by the fire, feeling exhausted but rather pleased with herself.

She’ll rock the cradle gently, looking up at the mantelpiece, at all the photos of Bones through the years. She’ll fancy they look back at her, and past her to the three-day-old newborn with wisps of stubborn red hair, sleeping soundly in her cradle.

“Amelia,” she’ll say, softly, “let me tell you a story.”

And up on the mantelpiece, a young woman with a paper tiara in her curly hair will smile down at them, under the lights of the Christmas tree.

~//~


End file.
